


h✧ly

by seryphsystem (Slie)



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: F/M, M/M, Not really an AU, Suicide, blood and sex and death oh my, celestial!AU kind of, neku bb this is not a healthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 11:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3568523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slie/pseuds/seryphsystem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he knows the city now, knows its god and its music and the nature of it.<br/>and still he worships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a sacrifice

_your soul is beautiful,_ he says, kissing constellations into Neku’s back, _stars are being born and I can hear them_ like Neku’s a nebula, like his small thin body of blood and breath and dust is something to be wondered at. Like Neku could ever be anything like him.

 _“_ What are they saying?” Neku asks, touch-drunk and loose with exhaustion in his own bones, his human bones. He can’t keep up with this creature, this being who claims kinship with angels. He can’t court death and live, too. It’s impossible, and he trembles with the weight of it.

 _silly,_ the god whispers. _why don’t you tell me?_

As though there were ever any secrets Neku could hold from him.

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Neku catches him sometimes in rare unguarded moments, back turned, praying to his own God who Neku doesn’t know, doesn’t hear.

His bare body is speckled with stardust, and every time Neku wonders that he can hear the world singing.

He has small freckles that no one would have guessed about, spread carefully over the skin of his smooth shoulders and decorating the arch and stretch of his wings. They look like galaxies.

In his true form like this his hair is less hair and more gaseous light, wisps of pale nebulae, a halo. He shows Neku artwork sometimes, and Neku wonders at how he seems more lovely and alive than all the angels.

Neku claims defiance, but he can see why people would come to worship this being, this celestial who takes offerings of song and music and light and spins them into gifts for some higher power, some higher purpose that nobody knows of.

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Sometimes he doesn’t. Those days Neku finds him stretched out on his throne, draped lazily in gems and silk and gentle lines of light that burn to touch, to even think of touching.

Neku hesitates to move closer those nights, has to be coaxed and commanded, somehow finds himself kneeling at pale feet with tender, painful fingers running through his hair.

The god’s smile is sharp and sated in times like those, pleased with his power and his presence. He takes only what is offered, never hinting at force or punishment, but somehow Neku finds himself arching and twisting with increasingly louder cries, every fragment of himself laid bare and laid before the throne.

 _what do you offer?_ _what do you desire?_ he asks, wraps Neku in his own silks and cradles him in star-sharp feathers that are hot and cold all at once. His voice is painfully bright, and Neku feels like he could shatter from it as a star kisses blessings and blasphemies into every centimeter of his skin.

 _I have nothing to offer,_ Neku thinks, and the god takes him anyway.

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Sometimes his body is round and soft, wide and wider like the Buddha statues tourists like to buy in crowded side shops. Neku flattens his palms over the god’s skin then, over the gentle expanse of it, cups breasts and cradles hipbones like an altar, his holy of holy of holies. He knows now not to question it.

Other days his god is shaped long and lean, edges pressing against Neku like the harsh barrel of a gun, pressing kisses on his forehead like careful bullets. He holds Neku tight, hard arms like a pact or a promise, protecting. He doesn't run away this time.

And Neku worships.

How could he not, with a god like this?

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Joshua has stars in his bones and sometimes Neku can hear them singing. They call _glory, glory, glory_ louder than life, louder than words.

Who do gods worship?

 

 

 

 

 


	2. the altar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's a darker side to all of this.

It isn’t healthy, what they have.

Joshua has to remind himself that Neku is not a sacrifice, not an offering, for all that his blood has spilled on holy ground and his voice has rung high and thin before Shibuya’s throne.

Some days he forgets, but Neku doesn’t complain much, offers himself up before the being who would destroy (would have destroyed, did destroy) his whole world. Joshua is always unusually gentle after these days. If the word hesitant could ever be stretched to describe him, it would describe him then.

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Sometimes he shifts his body once, twice, many times over- appearing before Neku in as many shapes as a human ever could, ever will, like he’s searching for one that could hope to contain him.

He is.  They don’t.

Back in his holy place, he shudders and stretches his wings with the strain of it.

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Neku is beautiful. He doesn’t believe it, not really- denies it and protests and flushes with embarrassment when Joshua reminds him of it.

That’s fine. Joshua has as long as he wants to convince him. Neku doesn’t know it yet, but so long as Joshua decides, he’s going to live forever.

Until then, he murmurs his appreciation against warm skin, holds his proxy and marvels at the beauty and life of him, skims his fingers along Neku’s  skin as though they were paintbrushes straining to capture perfection.  

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

There’s a darker side to all of this.

Some days, he wakes up before Neku with an odd feeling, a shifted feeling, like everything has been shuffled around and his skin doesn’t fit anymore. It’s a reminder.

He leaves the apartment early those days, leaves a breakfast of sliced fruit (in the shape of a cute face, of course) and a note (have a good day, dear!) on the counter for Neku to find. He dresses simple, in a small slim body and button-ups and slacks more suited to his days as a Player than to his life as a city-god.

As Neku’s living god. That especially defines him, these days.

Then he will wander towards Udagawa, letting his frail form respond to the mural there like an afterthought, a beautiful footnote. Or he’ll follow the rush of music in his blood to Pork City, take the elevator to the top and stare out on the expanse of his domain.

He doesn’t wait for cars before crossing the street; he just walks, like he owns every step of asphalt he steps on. (He does. And he understands, so he forgives the cursing drivers their transgressions.)

Then he jumps. Then he shoots.

Joshua dies.

He steps around the blood. He picks up the gun. He moves on.

There’s a price to pay, for gods who want to live like humans.

 

~~✧~✧~✧~~

 

Neku asks, when Joshua bemoans the lack of offerings, why he doesn’t have a shrine. But Shibuya is his shrine, and he considers every new thing it makes to be an offering.

He especially likes candles, and soft loose silks, and gemstones (even fake ones.) But nothing is better than imagination, music and dance and art and new life.

Neku doesn’t see himself as a priest, but he hands out blessings carelessly and when someone asks him what he believes in, he stutters. Aware of Joshua’s laughter above him, he manages to mutter something about an old god of Shibuya, a god of beauty and blood and the arts.

Joshua must have interfered, because Neku doesn’t hear or remember the name he gives, hardly even remembers that he gave one.

It gets around that Neku is good for success for these sorts of things, that his god grants inspiration and his blessings are true. A few people shyly ask him what offerings are best to make to his god. Others ask him to come to their events, free of charge, and he doesn’t catch on that they’re seeking Joshua's blessing for it.

The city-god approves. And he laughs, when Neku demands to know why everyone keeps doing these sorts of things, dammit, he hasn’t had to pay for a ticket to anything for months.

 _silly. why don’t you tell me?_ he teases back.

He killed Neku. He brought him back.

He killed Neku. He kept him.

 


End file.
